Sniff Sniff
I harvested some of my basil and put it into the dehydrator.
One of the unexpected perks of using a dehydrator is the alluring smell that infuses the air in the house. Basil, especially, fills the house with the most amazing aroma. I find myself repeatedly sucking in the deepest breaths I can, as if I can’t get enough air.
It’s super easy to dry a mess of basil in a dehydrator. Just thorougly wash, remove the leaves from the stems, distribute evenly on the dehydrator trays, and follow the manufacturer’s directions for temperature and time.
When it’s finished, I will put the dehydrated basil in the freezer so it will last even longer.
The leaves that were blemished or too tiny, and the stems, went into the chicken coop. Basil is good for chickens. Putting it in the coop helps keep pests away. Alternatively, you can put it in their food and/or water for mucous membrane and respiratory support.
Before I had a dehydrator, I dried basil in my microwave oven. Again, It’s not complicated to do though this method takes a bit more time and attention. It would be the preferable approach to use if you have just a little bit of basil to dry. For those who buy fresh basil from the grocery store, this would be a great way to not waste the little bit leftover that you didn’t need for your recipe.
To dry basil in the microwave:
Remove the leaves from the stems, wash and drain, then blot dry with a paper towel (a salad spinner would be even better). Lay the leaves on a paper towel covered plate and cover the leaves with another paper towel. (A paper plate would be good – I used one of my Corelle plates and, while it didn’t break, it got really, really hot.) Be sure to open up folded leaves so more surface area is exposed. Microwave in 30-second increments until dry and crunchy. After each thirty-second increment, open the microwave and fluff the paper towel cover to let the hot, humid air out of the oven. It usually takes a total of 3 minutes (six 30-second increments) for each batch in my microwave. It is very obvious when the batch is done.
This winter, I will use both the basil and the peaches I processsed to make and enjoy:
Mix 1/4 cup flour, 1/4 teaspoon each of salt and pepper. Save 2 teaspoons of the flour mixture for later. Dredge 4 chicken breasts in the remaining flour mixture. Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a skillet and cook chicken over medium heat for 8-10 minutes each side, until it’s no longer pink inside. Transfer to a plate and keep warm. Add one sliced onion (do not use onion flakes or powder use real onion!), 1/2 teaspoon minced garlic (or 1 clove, smashed), and the reserved floor mixture to the skillet and cook, stirring, for 3 minutes. Add 3/4 cup chicken stock and 1 tablespoon lemon juice and bring to a boil, stirring to scrape the bits from the pan. Add 1 cup peach slices (or a 10 ounce freezer bag), reduce heat to medium and cook, stirring, for 3 minutes. Stir in 1/4 cup fresh basil leaves (crunch up dehydrated leaves and heat until rehydrated). Pour sauce over chicken. Yum!.
Eager is Happy
Now that the rooster is out of the hen house, Eager is out of the nest box. This is so much healthier for her, mentally and physically.
If you remember, Road Runner (the rooster) was beating Eager up. Her response was to retreat to the nest box. He wasn’t always this way with her. She went broody a few months ago and tried to hatch some eggs. When she was done with that, and came back into rotation, he treated her like a pariah and the other hens followed his lead. When she came around the three of them he would chase her and then didn’t just jump her in a roosterly-duty sort of way, he would flog her. So, she went where she knew he wouldn’t follow – the nest box.
The other two hens (Pecky and Caboose) were over-used and seemed to have developed an abuse victim kind of relationship with him. “If we are very nice, and don’t upset him, maybe he won’t hurt us so bad.” To some extent, this seemed to work for them. When they were free-ranging, he would find tasty treats and call them over to share with them. (If Eager came over he would chase her off).
Anyway, the point of the story is: Eager is happy. She is out of the nest box and interacting with the other hens and the chicks. Pecky and Caboose will take awhile to grow their feathers back but they appear to be more calm and content as well.
Who would have thought I’d be involved with supporting the mental health of a chicken?
Eager has always been the friendliest of the hens.
Aannd It’s Done
It took awhile but I am finally done with Peach Week! I do not want to see another peach for a very long time.
The effort though has resulted in:
13 quart bags of individually frozen slices
to use for peach pie, peach cobbler, peach cake, or just in a bowl with whipped cream
4 quart bags of dehydrated peaches
useful for oh so many things besides snacking on – there’s a hand pie recipe I especially want to try
6 half pints and 1 whole pint of freezer jam
for all things done with jam
peach slurry
to process jam later in the year when it’s not so hot
15 whole peaches in the freezer
to use in peach muffins, peach pancakes
5 pints of slices in sugar water in the freezer
to thaw and eat like canned peaches
10 pints of canned peaches
there were 11 but one siphoned out in the water bath
3 dozen or so fresh peaches
gifted to friends
Lots and lots of peach peels
to feed the chickens, the compost pile, and even the dang squirrels
Lessons Learned:
~Canning uses So Much Water and my Berkey couldn’t filter water fast enough to keep up with the need. I need containers to store Berkey-filtered water ahead of time. When I canned in previous years, I had to buy jugs of water from the grocery store, which was expensive.
~I need to acquire a new knife; one that holds it’s edge better. Despite resharpening my perfectly-sized knife before beginning each work session, it just wasn’t providing as clean a cut as it used to. I guess I’ve just worn the thing out.
~Despite knowing, intellectually, how the Tattler Reusable Canning Lids work, since they were new to me, I delayed the canning until the very end of the peaches (resulting in very few jars of peaches). Naturally, the lids worked just like they are supposed to and my anxiety was unnecessary.
~Oscar learned that, if you’re going to eat the food, you’re going to help process the food. He learned the difference between a half-pint, pint, and quart jar, and wide-mouth vs regular mouth jars. He learned you can save time and effort sterilizing and heating jars by running them through the dishwasher for twenty minutes, instead of pouring boiling water in them (requiring the use of yet another burner on the stove). He Might have learned that he shouldn’t try to sneak off to build a Lego kit while Grandma is processing peaches because she will certainly ruin your fun with a long list of tasks that need to be done.
Information for Future Reference
It is easier to peel a chilled peach than a room temperature peach.
3 peaches per pint (6 per quart) – about 1.25 pounds per pint (2.4 pounds per quart) – for sliced, canned peaches;
3.5 pounds of peaches for one batch of jam
2 – 3 peaches fill a tray in my Nesco dehydrator (FD-75PR).
Contender vs Win-Blo
Kalawi Farm, where I get my peaches each year, has 29 varieties of freestone peaches but I have stuck with these two varieties. I think I haven’t tried others because Peach Week never lasts for just a week, and, by the time I’m done, I am sick of peaches. I’m thoroughly satisfied with these two varieties. Each has it’s advantages.
Win-Blo is my all time favorite. It has a firmer texture that does not break down as easily with processing. The pit comes out clean. There’s not as much mess but it’s still juicy and flavorful. It has great “keeping” power.
I like Contender. It’s sweet and juicy and great for jam though, I will freeze it also. The texture is not as firm, it’s stringier. It seems to creates more juice. It doesn’t “keep” power as well as Win-Blo. Even though it is a freestone peach, the pit is harder to remove and you frequently have to clean the inside of the slice because wood from the pit is still attached to the peach flesh.
So, why don’t I buy Win-Blo exclusively? Simply because by the time I’m in a peach mood, I barely catch their season so I’m sometimes hard-pressed to get enough. Contender is out around the time Win-Blo is winding down so I usually end up bringing some of them home, too.
Spreading Joy Everywhere
We are just spreading joy everywhere. (Yes, that was said in a sarcastic tone). You see, it’s not just the rooster who’s mad at us – the squirrels are mad too.
We started building the hoop run in March but once we got the bare minimums done, we stopped. All this time the chickens have been protected by chicken wire, a tarp, and a prayer against predators.
We have not had any mishaps, though the squirrels had no problem entering and helping themselves to the chicken feed, the chicken scratch, the chicken treats. I suspect maybe some chicken eggs, too. The chickens would just stare at the squirrels from the other end of the run and let them have whatever they wanted. (Where’s the bully rooster now, huh?)
The chicks had an extra layer of defense as their brooder box was covered with hardware cloth which has tiny, inflexible holes and is a heavier gauge of wire. So, they were safe in their brooder.
With the impending release of tender, juicy chicks into the run, however, I was not taking chances, and we finally got the hoop run covered with hardware cloth.
Translation: the squirrels’ free buffet is over – they can no longer get into the run – they are not happy.
Next on the list for the chicken coop that will never be done, we have to put plywood on the original run to expand the coop and make a new doorway into that section. That, though, is for another week-end.
Garden Surprises
After the snake sighting (a story for another time), I refused to go in the yard and garden or to the chicken coop until Oscar mowed. I made Oscar water the garden and take care of the chickens for a week. The long grass made it too difficult to spot the nefarious copperheads that seem to be in abundance this year.
As soon as he had executed that obligation, I was able take stock of everything and there were some lovely surprises!
When I was young, my mother declared a hatred for squash. As a result, I did not have zucchini until I was in college and did not venture any further for another fifteen years. When I lived in Flagstaff, the Jeffs family served it at dinner one night and I was an instant convert. Yellow squash sauted with butter and onion has become one of my favorite summer vegetables! The Golden Delight Zucchini was a bonus pack of seeds I got from Hoss Tools. I am curious to see how it compares to the usual green zucchini.
I left all the peppers on the plants until I figure out how to tell when they are ready to pick.
There were even a few green beans ready to pick and eat.
The day was full of unexpected surprises!
The Rooster is Mad
Road Runner has been banished from the coop. We have put him in the little coop that we used for the sick roosters last fall and winter (thoroughly sanitized of course). As you can imagine, he is not pleased!
There are two excellent reasons for this move.
First, the time for moving the chicks from the brooder to the coop is upon us. They have definitely outgrown the brooder box.
In fact, they’ve had a couple of sleepovers with Eager, Pecky, and Caboose the past few of nights. They still spend the day in their brooder box. When I come home at night, they get to comingle with the hens. While there will be some pecking by the hens, the integration of the chicks should go much smoother without the rooster wanting to kill them.
Second, he has been a bully to the three hens he was hatched with last year. He has tyrannized Eager to the point she is eternally broody (thus laying no eggs) and has to be forcibly dragged out of the nest box. He has been so aggressive with Pecky and Caboose that both their backs and part of their wings have been stripped of feathers from his excessive attention. I tried chicken saddles on the girls, which worked really well for awhile – until they learned how to slip out of them.
I expect him to keep him separated for a few months. After the chicks are full grown and the hens are completely healed, I will start the process of re-introducing him to the flock. By then, flock dynamics will have shifted and a new pecking order established without him. He will be the newcomer who has to find his new place in the flock.
That said, human logic and chicken behavior do not always synch. We’ll have to see how it plays out in the end. For the time being though, his new nickname is Grumpy Butt.
A Continuing Journey
Welcome to Two Chickens Homestead! I have been blogging for a little more than ten years as My Provident Journey but it was time for a change.
Throughout the past year, I have come to realize the My Provident Journey blog no longer fit my direction and focus for this period of my life. In fact, it’s purpose is so far in the past that I had blocked most of the previous years’ posts.
When I started My Provident Journey all those years ago, it was to have a place to record my skill- and knowledge-building after the Provident Living group I had participated in, while living in Wyoming, disbanded.
Provident Living is about Food Storage and Emergency Preparedness and using our resources wisely. Ten years ago, that’s where I was in my journey. As we all should, I have continued evolving. I now better understand that all those things, and much more, fall under the Self-Reliance umbrella.
The term “Self-Reliance” is often misinterpreted as doing it all yourself. To me though, “Self-Reliance” declares a mindset of learning to do what you can for yourself and continuing to learn to do even more. That is going to look different in every household. Embracing Self-Reliance in an urban apartment will look very different than it will on a 40+ acre farm.
My focus now is on bringing more of my personal supply chain closer to home, learning how to do more of the basic skills that were an integral part of the lives of previous generations, doing as much for myself and my household as I can, and developing a community of friends with different skill sets to accomplish the things I’m not (yet) able to do for myself.
That said, there will be limitations. I am of an age and health-status where starting a 40-acre anything is not in my cards. I have more than most though – an acre. I will not be raising and slaughtering cows and pigs – but I can raise chickens. My gardening skills, rudimentary at best, are now restricted to container and vertical gardening techniques. Nevertheless, there is So Much I can accomplish within these parameters and I am enjoying discovering ways to be more self-reliant despite my limitations.
So, join me on my continuing journey here at Two Chickens Homestead. Press the Follow button, comment on blog posts, and add your own experiences as you start (or continue) on your own journey!
One Down
One basket done; three baskets to go.
Peach Week is Here!
Today I went to Kalawi Farm and brought peaches home. Lots and lots of peaches.
120 pounds of peaches
Yes, I have a problem matching my desire to process lots and lots of peaches with my body’s ability to do so.
I got a load of peaches into the dehydrator today. That used 16 peaches and didn’t even make a dent in one basket. My back is screaming and I cut my finger.
It’s going to be a long week.
Correction: “Peach Month is Here!”
Blueberry Hill
This past weekend we were blessed with free blueberries. Wilding Acres Farm has a large blueberry patch that overwhelms them with blueberries every year and we were invited to come over and partake of their abundance.
In a very short time, we had picked our fill. Don’t worry though, there were plenty of ready to pick and hundreds of soon-to-ripen berries left on the bushes.
Blueberries are easy to wash, pack in baggies, and pop into the freezer to enjoy throughout the year.
I’m busy looking for new recipes to try!
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